I thoroughly enjoyed my two week placement experience; I gained a lot of insight into the teaching profession and learned all different aspects of the job. I was placed in Primary 1, where i spent the duration of the two weeks. The class was filled with twenty pupils; each different in terms of skill and personality. The pupils were a joy to work with; they made me laugh and surprised me with their abilities. Everyday was a learning day, not only for the pupils but for me too! I enjoyed asking the classroom teacher questions about things I was interested in or wanted to clarify. The teacher was a great inspiration to me; she was kind and approachable and all of the children in her class looked up to her. The classroom teacher was extremely understanding and patient; children with oral language problems and behavioural problems were treated fairly and were always offered extra assistance.
I was warned from the beginning that Primary 1 involved a lot of arts and crafts – this definitely was the case! I helped the children create a carriage out of paper mache; I painted a castle made out of cardboard; I even had to squish my hands into the smallest of scissors to cut out various different activities. These may seem like easy jobs, however it became apparent just how heavy the workload is. I witnessed the endless planning for weeks in advance – often my classroom teacher was stressed at the idea of being slightly unprepared. The teachers regularly had staff meetings after school hours which meant a lot of their marking and preparing had to be done at home. I realised that organisation is truly a key skill to become a successful teacher. On the other hand, the positives definitely outweighed the negatives. From only observing a snippet of classroom life, I seen how rewarding the job is. There seems like no greater feeling than knowing what you have taught has made sense to classroom full of five year olds.
In my school, the infant area had recently adopted a new teaching method. The Primary 1s would come in sharp at 8.50AM for a ‘soft start’ – this meant that the children would play for the first twenty minutes of the day. After this, the children would be split into their zones where they would learn through play. This approach seemed very odd to me – the children had no writing books and rarely ever sat on their seats to do work. Most of the time they were playing games which did involve the use of some literacy and numeracy skills, but not many. Due to this, I found it increasingly difficult to complete a few of the placement tasks as the levels of literacy and maths were quite limited and basic.
Overall, i thought that placement was fantastic. Each day was exciting and enjoyable. It has made me feel driven to be successful in this course. It was devastating to leave on Friday, the experience was amazing and I cannot wait to do it again!
